Conjunction of Venus and Saturn

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Conjunctions feed


Venus and Saturn will share the same right ascension, with Venus passing 9'13" to the north of Saturn.

At around the same time, the two objects will also make a close approach, technically called an appulse.

From Cambridge , the pair will be visible in the dawn sky, rising at 03:33 (EDT) – 3 hours and 35 minutes before the Sun – and reaching an altitude of 25° above the south-eastern horizon before fading from view as dawn breaks at around 06:29.

Venus will be at mag -4.2, and Saturn at mag 0.5, both in the constellation Libra.

The pair will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Venus and Saturn around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the two objects at the moment of conjunction will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 14h44m10s 13°24'S Libra -4.2 16"6
Saturn 14h44m10s 13°33'S Libra 0.5 15"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 42° from the Sun, which is in Ophiuchus at this time of year.

The sky on 20 May 2024

The sky on 20 May 2024
Sunrise
05:15
Sunset
20:04
Twilight ends
22:06
Twilight begins
03:13


Waxing Gibbous

93%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:25 11:09 17:52
Venus 05:08 12:23 19:38
Moon 17:19 22:43 03:57
Mars 03:26 09:46 16:07
Jupiter 05:17 12:34 19:51
Saturn 02:28 08:07 13:47
All times shown in EDT.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Related news

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24 Feb 1984  –  Saturn enters retrograde motion
03 May 1984  –  Saturn at opposition
13 Jul 1984  –  Saturn ends retrograde motion

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

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